Unraveled
by m.jules
Summary: My heart broke yesterday when you weren't looking.
1. Unraveled

Title: Unraveled  
Author: m.jules  
Fandom: Firefly  
Pairing: Mal/River  
Prompt: 47, "Heart"  
Rating: PG  
Word Count: 715  
Disclaimer: Joss's. Love, not money.  
Author's Notes: Angst. 'Shipping doesn't always mean happy endings. Kisses to **mollita** for beta. No _Serenity_ spoilers, though it could be considered post-_Serenity_ in timeline if you like. Definitely post-"Objects In Space."

* * *

"River ... River what are you doing?"

Simon's voice echoed through her, filtering in through all the _zào yin_ in her brain. She looked up from the raveled edge of her skirt and flinched away from his look of concern, her hair falling in her face.

"_Mei-mei,_" he chided gently, taking her hands away from the frayed edge of the fabric, noticing that she had undone the weaving on the fine silk all the way up past her knees. "Why...?"

"Can't unravel myself. Can't scrape off my skin and peel away muscle and tendon and flesh, crush bones to powder. You'd just put me back together. Have to take something apart -- inside, everything has _beng kuì_. Have to make the outsides match."

"What are you talking about, River? What happened?" He pulled her hands into his lap, massaging them, but she yanked them away petulantly, returning them to the delicate threads of the skirt, and resumed pulling them apart. When he looked as if he would try to stop her again, she gave him an evil glare and he settled back on his heels awkwardly.

"My heart broke yesterday while you weren't looking. Never look anymore - never watch me. Just like at the ballet when Daddy kept checking his waves, missed my pirouette, missed my pax de deus. Even stumbled once to hear him gasp but he didn't see that either." She frowned fiercely at him. "You're not looking at me anymore."

A pang of guilt flashed through Simon at her accusation and he blushed. He _had_ been spending more time with Kaylee than River lately -- but he'd thought she was getting better, and she'd been spending so much time in Mal's company. He admitted he had thought something was happening between them, that Mal was taking to River in a way that would make Simon's constant brothering unwelcome.

"So did I," she spat, her lower lip trembling as tears welled up in her eyes. "Thought there was something. But even readers are tricked. Psychics are surprised when people lie to themselves." She jerked on one silk thread and a run several inches long streaked up the skirt, up to her hip. "Not always true."

Understanding suddenly flared in Simon's mind and he made a silent "oh" with his mouth. "Inara," he guessed, and the thread in River's hand snapped.

"She bought me this dress," River whispered. "So pretty. So delicate. Her goobye present to me. But she didn't stay gone, her goodbye was a lie. Dress is unraveled. She came back, stole away the possibilities."

She was silent for long moments, and Simon drew her into his arms, not knowing what else to say. He patted her back awkwardly, but the feel of warm girlflesh against him made him think of Kaylee -- everything did nowadays -- and shame washed over him afresh.

"Lies," River whispered. "Tangled web will come unwoven. Cradle falls. Shatters. Won't last. But damage is already done, can't undo things like that. Can't fix some things when they break."

Simon frowned, scrambling for words to say to help her. "_Mei-mei,_" he ventured, but she cut him off.

"No, Simon," she sighed. "This is not my _lì lái zuì di dian._ I'm only tearing the dress."

He couldn't argue with that - his mind nearly exploded with the sudden aching vision of her tearing open her skin with her fingernails, writhing with emotional torment in another time and place, and he looked down at where her fingers were still worrying the decimated fabric, grateful that there were no bloodstains.

He kissed her on the forehead and she sighed, pushing him away gently. "Go on," she whispered. "I promise not to fall just to make you look."

He held her closer despite her hands against his chest, and she sighed, relenting and curling into him. "I promise to watch more closely," he said. "And _àn bing bù dòng._ Sometimes things change. People change. Hearts change."

She looked up at him then, her eyes red-rimmed with tears, and she bravely tried on a shaky smile. "Thank you," she murmured, and he pressed his lips to her hairline again.

"Anytime, _mei-mei._ Anytime."

* * *

Glossary:

_zào yin_ - white noise, static  
_Mei-mei,_ - little sister  
_beng kuì_ - crumbled, fallen apart  
_lì lái zuì di dian._ - lowest point of my life  
_àn bing bù dòng._ - bide your time; literally, don't send all your soldiers into a battle. 


	2. And His Right Arm

**Prompt:** 83, "And"  
**Rating:** PG  
**Word Count:** 1,113  
**Disclaimer:** Joss's. Love, not money.  
**Author's Notes:** Molly picked the prompt. I made the leap from "83" to Song of Songs 8:3, found my title, and had to figure out a story. Molly wanted smut. Unfortunately, she didn't get it. But she DID get a follow-up to "Unraveled." This takes place post-_Serenity_, and in the same universe (as far as Mal's backstory goes) as "Shadow of Your Wings" and "Crippled Lion." my own little 'verse here...

* * *

_"Let his left arm be under my head, and his right arm embrace me." - Song of Songs 8:3_

She was high strung and uneasy, jumpy and generally afflicted with the jitters all day long, every day, for a couple of weeks. It got so bad that Simon started asking concerned doctor-type questions instead of just brother-questions, and Kaylee hovered with all the concern of a mother cow trying to nuzzle her newborn calf to its feet.

But River wasn't a calf and what ailed her wasn't anything her brother's doctoring could fix.

It was how Mal and Inara had started burying their axes when Inara had come back on board, and how they smiled more easily now and Inara held her tongue when before she would've scolded him and didn't take quite so much offense when he called her a whore. It probably helped, too, that he didn't call her that quite so often anymore.

It was enough to make River want to start biting her nails and she knew better, knew it wouldn't do anything but send little scraps of fingernail scraping down her trachea into her belly. She was tempted, still; wondered if there was a way to claw out of herself from the inside if maybe she bit them off with sharp edges. But it hurt the first time she tried to chew through the thick white curve on her thumb and she ran her tongue over her teeth, almost checking for chips though she knew the enamel was stronger than that.

Strong nails -- her mind skipped close to a thought she'd picked up from someone, once, of fingernail scratches down a strong, muscular back and she thought she might choke because, though she didn't understand it, it triggered the same gnawing hunger in her belly that she'd so often felt rolling off of Wash and Zoe in waves.

Sorrow crashed against desire and she felt split in half, suddenly - sad and somber on one side, hot and itchy and _wanting_ on the other. Awash in the emotions -- and she might not be crazy anymore, but there wasn't any way to fix the way her feelings couldn't be told to queue up and wait their gorram turn -- she missed the approach of footsteps, even missed the warmth of his mind entering the room until it was brushing so close up against hers it felt like a physical hand, and she jumped, gasping.

He didn't speak, just settled down beside her on the metal grating of the catwalk that overlooked _Serenity_'s cargo hold. She watched him closely, did her best to close her mind off from his, afraid of what she might find there if she looked at it straight on. Afraid of where she'd land in his estimation if she and Inara were tossed up in the air side by side. Who would come down first? And closest to him?

"I ain't good with words, and I can't read your mind, so I'm just gonna ask you straight out. _Huo shì?_" he said abruptly, and she'd been so preoccupied with worrying that she hadn't expected him to speak at all.

She nodded, not trusting her voice, and he took a deep breath.

"What's got you all knotted up inside, little River?" His voice was almost guttural, and she couldn't help the smile that swelled up from the inside and curved her mouth in reaction. That was the voice that came out when something was important, when the answer _meant_ something. It told her that _she_ meant something, and nothing could have been more welcome to hear.

"Strung up and strangling," she whispered, and her forehead wrinkled. "New to me, jealousy and want. Never knew it before, not like this. Not like when Simon got a dedicated source box and I didn't. Not like when something pretty, shiny caught my eye before Christmas. Different. Stronger." She swallowed. "Worse."

"Worse?"

"Hurts. Inside. Quit crying after the first night, though. Woke Simon up and he was worried, couldn't sleep again. Just bite the pillow now, my hand sometimes."

She knew he'd understand the reference; knew he'd remember the way he'd stuffed a sheet-covered fist into his mouth the day he'd buried his mother and bit down until he could tell himself the tears that squeezed out of his eyes were from the pain in his hand and not his heart.

He caught his breath and she looked at him with eyes that shone with a fearful kind of honesty.

"Want you the way you wanted her back," she whispered. "Need to feel your hands the way you wanted to hear her voice, just one more time. Wanted to see her again to say goodbye proper, not half-cursed denials in the snow, not buried in hatred toward the wolves, toward Alliance."

"That bad, huh?" he grimaced, and she binked, looking away from him quickly, scrambling to keep her mind inside her own brain and shut his out so that she would only hear his rejection from his mouth and not his heart.

"That bad," she confirmed, and despite her best efforts, tears pooled in her eyes and she held her breath, trying not to blink. If they didn't fall, she didn't have to admit she'd cried.

"C'mere," he said finally, after what felt like eternity stretching out as far as the eye could see. She didn't move though - couldn't - and he scooted closer to her, putting his arm around her and pulling her into his side. His other arm came around and rested on her cheek, his fingers barely tangling in her hair, as he gently coaxed her head to his shoulder. She submitted, but stiffly, and it wasn't until he started caressing her hair and skin that she started to relax.

"I ain't gonna lie and tell you I got everythin' figured out just yet," he sighed. "But I ain't gonna do anything to hurt you, either, little one. There's somethin' in you that..." he stopped awkwardly, and she ventured to open her mind a little, found what he hadn't been able to say, and smiled.

Hope and fear swirled in her chest and she closed her eyes, the tears finally falling, dripping down over her smile, and she slipped her arms around his waist as she held her breath and let the moment crystallize in her memory.

If nothing else, she would always remember this moment when his arms were around her and he admitted, at least inside his own head, that there was something in her that he needed.

* * *

_huo shì?_ - "Okay?" 


End file.
